Patrick White - Voss

On the night of rain when they had made themselves at home beneath the rock ledge, they were noticeably united, the splendid, glossy gentleman, who had by now acquired the colour and texture of a coconut, and the yellow reprobate, whose body was crying out through the mouths of his boils. After they had lit their little fire, of which the spitting alone was a comfort, they began to say kind things to each other.

‘Here is a pinch of tea,’ Turner said. ‘You take your quart, Ralph, and brew for yerself. I have not got the stomach for even a hot cup of tea.’

‘But you are eating,’ Angus pointed out.

‘By George, so I am. It is from habit, I assure you,’ said Turner, crooking his finger a bit from proximity to the gentleman.

‘Then you will drink from habit, too, idiot,’ said Angus. ‘Or I will pour it into the ground.’

‘If you please, then,’ said Turner, with genteel resignation.

The quart pot was soon sighing on the damp sticks. As the scum rose from the water, the men would knock it off. Each was seated tailorwise, sticking the fragments of food into his mouth, and staring far too intently at the pot, the alternative of which would have been his mate’s face.

It was at this point and from this position that they had looked out and seen the horseman descending the hill.

What they had always suspected, the lightning at once made evident: that the rider was not of their own kind. Even before he was gone, each of the cave-dwellers was raging, and longing to communicate his rage. They were brought together closer than before. Each wondered what the other had seen, although neither would have dared to speculate on the nature of his vision. Thought is very disturbing when it lights up the mind by green flashes.

Some time after Le Mesurier had left, while Turner was still picking his teeth and digesting what he had eaten, he did remark:

‘That is one I cannot cotton to, Ralph.’

The young landowner winced, and was loth to criticize a man who might possibly be considered a member of his own class.

‘He is an odd sort of cove. He is different,’ finally he replied.

‘Not so different from some,’ Turner said.

‘What do you imply by that?’ asked Angus, who did not care to become involved in any unpleasantness.

He was what you would call a pleasant fellow, no one had anything against him, and now he did a little repent of his rash friendship.

‘Eh?’ mumbled Turner, resentfully.

‘What do you mean, then?’

‘Voss is what I mean. And Le Mesurier.’

Angus tingled.

‘In this expedition, which is what it is called,’ Turner said, or whispered, rather, from habit, ‘we are made up of oil and water, you might say, and will not run together, ever.’

The whites of the young grazier’s eyes had remained very clear.

‘I have every intention,’ he said, ‘of running together with Mr Voss, who is the leader of the expedition.’

‘Oil and water,’ Turner chanted.

The fire hissed.

‘We understand each other, Ralph, you and me.’

The rich young landowner did sincerely yearn for understanding with his friend.

‘As that is a quart pot, there is no mistake about it,’ Turner assured him, and the black pot did look most convincing. ‘But that there Le Mesurier’ — how the speaker hated the name, and would roll it between his tongue and his palate, more often than not, as if to gather up a bad taste, and spit it out — ‘that Le Me- sur -ier would keep a cove guessing for years. Then you would wake up one fine day, and find as the pot was not at all what you and me thought it to be.’

The grazier was fascinated by the pot.

‘How so?’

He smiled to hide his intense interest.

‘People of that kind will destroy what you and I know. It is a form of madness with them.’

The young landowner clucked with his tongue against his teeth. He was unhappy once more. A runnel of rainwater, besides, was trickling down his neck. He was for ever shifting.

‘I know,’ pursued Turner, ‘because I have looked in the book.’

‘What book?’

‘Why, the book that Frank is always writing in.’

Angus was not aware that such a book existed, but pretended that he was. Thus he would conceal his ignorance of most things.

‘If it is his private property,’ he mumbled.

‘Naow, naow, Ralph,’ said Turner. ‘What is that?’

The hair stood up on the back of the young man’s neck. He avoided an answer.

‘What was in this book?’ he asked, unhappily.

‘Mad things,’ Turner replied, ‘to blow the world up; anyhow, the world that you and me knows. Poems and things.’

‘Poetry can be very enjoyable,’ said Angus, who had memories of young ladies seated after dinner beside lamps.

‘I do not deny that,’ Turner hastened to agree; ‘I am partial to a good read of it meself. But this was like, you might say, Ralph, like certain bits of the Bible. They are cut up, like, but to make trouble, not to make sense.’

As trouble was Turner’s own particular province, his mouth was now watering, and his eyes shone.

‘We have no right to make such comparisons, you know,’ insisted Angus, whose doubts of his friend had grown great.

‘Go on, Ralph,’ said the latter. ‘If a man don’t assume his rights, nobody is going to give ’em to him.’

The young grazier looked out into the night, on which a moon had risen. Black wings were continually sweeping the surface of the silver plain. It was the wind hustling the clouds, of course. But on several occasions during the journey, his own thoughts had developed a span that had carried them almost out of his control.

‘This is what I think, Ralph,’ Turner was saying, ‘mind you, in confidence, seeing as how we are mates. I think that Le Mesurier will in the end turn out to be in league with Voss. It is the oil, see? And that barmy boy, why, Harry would not harm a fly, but oil, oil, see, he must go over, too.’

Ralph Angus tossed what had been his handsome head. So horses will discourage the March fly.

‘I will not discuss Mr Voss,’ he said. ‘Besides, there is no question of going over to him. We are all with him.’

‘Discuss Mr Voss?’ spat Turner. ‘You cannot discuss what is not.…’

His spittle appeared white-hot, as it curled and twisted on the embers of the lost fire.

‘Do you believe in God, Ralph?’ asked Turner.

‘I should think there are very few individuals so miserable as not to,’ answered the upright young man.

Turner might have been rehearsing such a situation all his life.

‘I do not believe in God,’ he said.

A water was dripping in the silver silence.

‘Not in nothing that I cannot touch.’

He gave the quart an angry poke.

‘Do you think as Voss was reading my thoughts when he set hisself up? But I was not deceived.’

‘Are you not most unhappy?’ asked Angus, whom the disclosure had shocked considerably.

‘Oh, there is plenty of other things to believe in,’ Turner cried, looking in anguish at his friend’s face, which, however, avoided him.

‘Without dependin’ on God, who is the Devil, I would say, to have got us into a mess like this. There!’ cried the angry man. ‘That is what I think of Mr Bloomin’ Voss!’

Young Ralph Angus was so shaken he felt he could no longer call upon his own considerable virility for support.

‘Mr Palfreyman has faith,’ he remembered, with the relief of a pious girl.

‘Oh,’ shrugged Turner, ‘Mr Palfreyman is a good man.’

Consequently, he cancelled out.

The rocks in the moonlight were on the verge of bursting open, but failed.

‘There is still Albert Judd,’ murmured Turner, becoming dreamy. ‘He is ours, Ralph. He will lead us out. He is a man.’